Here’s an idea

I’m sitting outside on the sunniest day of 2009.  My graduation from UVM is in my wake and I’m excited about the future.

People ask my what I’m doing.  Do you have a job yet?  Are you going back to school? Where are you going to live?

Leaving Burlington has been such an interesting experience.  My family came to wish me well and congratulate me.  I wore a funny hat and was handed a piece of paper in a fancy folder by a man who looked a lot like someone from Hogworts.

There were great parties, fun times, lots of laughs and my dad made everyone within arms reach cry with him when I got my diploma.  Right after that… people started leaving.  Friends started saying bye, posters were rolled up and packed away.

I’m not going to say that it all went by so quickly.  It didn’t.  But the end did come suddenly.  It came with plenty warning, too.  It’s such a neat experience, packing up your things and leaving a town behind.  Burlington Vermont was very good to me.

I see my younger self in the care free sophomores walking into downtown burlington.  It’s the beginning of Summer for them.  Their flip flops slap their feet as they walk down to church street’s brick causeway and outdoor seating.  They get to experience Summer in Burlington as I pack up my car and tape up cardboard boxes.

I’m not sad.  I’m going to be living in boston.  I’ll be going to conferences and meeting people who work at companies in my field of interest.  I’m looking for a job that gets me going.  A job where I can break down some neat problem and create efficient solutions would keep my mind happy. I want to go to graduate school and get an engineering degree.

I’m buying old mopeds, rebuilding them, and then seling them.  I’m going to ride my moped into the city and have iced coffee in harvard square.  I’m going to meet new people and learn shortcuts throughout the city.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that things are changing.  They are changing suddenly and they are changing right now. This change is marked by tears, carboard boxes, renting uhauls, taking down posters, going to conferences, buying new clothes, and warm weather. I hope that I cry and I wonder when it’s going to happen, if at all.

In one way I feel like I’ve just knocked a glass off of the table and I’m trying to reach for it just before it hits the ground.

In another way I feel like I’m about to get off of the ski lift for my first time. I hope I don’t slip and stop the ski lift, embarrassing myself and knocking whoever is next to me onto the snow.  But I’ve got a feeling that I’m going to hit the snow and slide cleanly over to the first trail.

It is April 8th.  The year: 2009.

You probably know that I like projects.  Projects are excellent.  The most recent one that I’ve got myself involved in is horticulture.  Basically, I’m working on my green thumb.

I was surprised how cheap the set up can be.  Check out the one I’ve got going on….

I’m a little late in the season to start some plants from seed but it should work out pretty nicely. What I’ve got set up here is some flourescent lights.  A soft white and a cool white.

Why?  It’s actually kind of interesting.  Plants appear green when you look at them.  That’s because the light that falls within the “green” spectrum bounces off of the plant and into your eyes.  That means that plants use up the other parts of the spectrum.  In other words, blue and red.

Cool white is the blue, soft white is the red.  The plant gets what it needs with little excess wasted.  Pretty neat.

I’m taking this commercial plant propagation class that I really enjoy.  I’m learning all sorts of cool techinques: cutting, grafting, air-layering, tissue culturing…  I’d like to keep a garden from now on.  The set up I’ve got going right now was super cheap, about 30 bucks total.

I’ve been really busy, lately.  Its the end of senior year.  I’ve been doing this spine research, its pretty cool.  I’ve been using a micro CT machine to try to observe transport into the intervertebral disc.  If you are interested in the paper I wrote, you can check out the .pdf here.

So that’s been keeping me pretty busy, I’ve had to give a bunch of presentations.  But in the end I got an award for it, “The distinguished undergraduate research award”.  Not too shabby.

Speaking of shabbiness. The new wolverine origins movie was leaked.  But it wasn’t the complete version.  It was the working copy!  I didn’t know what that meant at first, then I watched it.  Basically it looks like a 10 year old made the CGI for the movie and there are no sound effects.  I’m still trying to figure out what else is wrong with it, but its pretty bad.  I only watched the first scene… I’m too excited for this movie to ruin it by watching it early.

Oh and P.S. I’m going to join you guys on twitter. My name is chedderfiend on there, whats yours?  I figure I’ll be able to update twitter more often than the blog because I always have my phone on me, y’know?

Wow I must have been asleep for a long time.  I remember going to bed and then waking up to a blog that hadn’t been updated in a long time.

That’s ludicrous. Also, if you watch the graph of the people who visit this blog… well let’s just say it has gone down.  But not as much as I might think.  People still visit, despite lack of content or anything interesting at all.

So quick recap: I find joy in lots of things now. I was just in Utah.  It’s really weird.  How, you ask? Umm… well for example, you will drive by this huuuggge building (or just a normal sized building in downtown Boston) and on the side of it in ginormous letters it says, “JESUS CHRIST of LATTER DAY SAINT…….office building”.

Oh, that’s cool. Jesus is in a meeting right now but I’m his secretary.  Sure, I’ll let jesus know you had some business to discuss.

Salt Lake City.

More recaps. I’m shopping at thrift stores all the time.  I got a sport coat/blazer whatever you wanna call it for 8 dollars.  I’ve got a collection going now and its very sweet.

Actually I’m trying to dress nicely lately.  Its tough without money, but thrift stores… I’m telling you they are gold mines. Never shop at a store again.  Go to a thrift store instead of the Gap or whereever you shop.  It’s pretty awesome.

Some of the stuff is really F’d in the A but a lot of it is excellent.

Other things? I visited my brother (the reason I went to Utah).  He has a band and its pretty sick. Tight. Dank. Those are words he uses often.  Particularly “Dank”.  The thing is, I’ve realized that “dank” means next to nothing.  I mean it basically can represent anything.  It doesn’t really describe whats good though.  You could say, “wow this lasagna is DANK” and I’ll know that you like it… but I won’t know why.  I’m going to try using more descriptive words.

It’s tough. Difficult. Challenging.

I’m reading kurt vonnegut’s ‘player piano’.  Great book. That man can write.

Keep it honest.

Part 2:

So that first post was written earlier this morning in the downstairs bathroom.  This one will be written upstairs, while I lay on my stomach and face my pillow. Face can be a verb.  It’s actually better that way.

I only have one order of business with you, but it will slowly trickle into multiple objectives. The main objective is to show you a video of one of my brother’s band’s favorite songs.  Apostrophe S. Okay the name of his band is “The Dim Spook” and I recorded this video when I visited him recently.  The song is called “Diddy kong racing”.

Sick. I actually really like the song.

Hyde you should send me that video of me birdwatching while, how do you say…. extremely excited about bird watching? That works. Very interested in the process of birdwatching.  When hyde sends it to me I’ll edit it into this post so you know what the hell I’m talking about.

Furthermore, second order of business. Roy is asking for it.  If it were 1995 I would boot you off of AIM.  If it were 1996 I would try and install a trojan in your computer, accidentally infect myself, then open up your CD rom drive after I figured out how to use the trojan.

Man, those things were awesome.  One time I ‘hacked’ into some girl’s computer and took a picture of her desktop while talking to her on AIM.  Then I sent it to her.  It was awesome.

About a year later Ronny (was that his name?) tried sending me a “RLY fun Simpsons game.exe” LOLzorz. I’m hip to your jive,  Ronny.

In middle school I remember going to his house (Ronny’s, if that’s his name).  He was very proud of the obscene amount of pornography magazines (aka porno mags) in his bathroom, living room, and kitchen. Come to think of it (no pun intended) I’m pretty sure there were porno mags in every room of that house.

I only went over once. I havent thought about it until now. I’m sharing this with the sphere.

Where did I put that book I was reading? I want to finish it.

Ciao